Kansas governor’s veto of bill protecting pregnancy centers overridden in victory for pro-life care

Kansas legislators wasted no time Friday in overriding the governor’s veto of a key pro-life bill.

Governor Laura Kelly Friday vetoed the “Pregnancy Center Autonomy and Rights of Expression Act,” (CARES Act), which protects private, nonprofit pregnancy centers as well as medical pregnancy centers.

That same evening, the Kansas Senate and House both rushed to immediately and easily override Kelly’s veto with a 30-9 vote in the Senate and 87-35 in the House.

Pregnancy centers provide life-affirming care and don’t offer or recommend abortions. Prior to the bill, the facilities could have been forced to provide abortion services that go against their religious and moral beliefs, but now they’re protected against that.

“This Governor is quick to talk about supporting choice, but that support disappears the moment a mother chooses life,” Speaker of the House Dan Hawkins wrote.

“Pregnancy resource centers step up every day to support women, children, and families all across Kansas. These organizations should not have their autonomy subject to interference from politicians or bureaucrats.”

Kelly said she vetoed the bill, known as HB 2635, because “the people of Kansas have made it clear, time and time again, that they want government to stay out of women’s private medical decisions. That means we shouldn’t be spending tax dollars trying to interfere with that very personal, very private, medical decision.”

However, having the government “stay out of women’s private medical decisions” as Kelly exhorts is exactly what the bill does – in explicitly protecting private pregnancy resource centers and their patients from government overreach.

Kelly campaigned for governor with a “middle of the road” advertisement where she claimed she is “not too far right or too far left,” but her veto of the CARES Act appears to contradict that.

A social media user commented on Kansas Family Voice’s post on X about the CARES Act:

“Governor Kelly has been regularly against any legislation or agenda that has a solid Biblical moral foundation, from my perspective. How could she have been in all those TV ads proclaiming herself to be centrist, middle of the road? I think that’s been repeatedly shown to have been wrong.”

“She is radical on the issues, like abortion, gender ideology, DEI,” Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson argued earlier this year. “She has been nowhere near the middle of the road. She’s closer to the fence off the left side of the ditch.”

Those in opposition to the CARES Act claim, without specificity, that pregnancy resource centers give false information about abortions and infringe on a woman’s right to kill her baby. However, recent cases involving Planned Parenthood and the abortion drug mifepristone suggest the ones spreading misinformation are actually those providing abortion-related services.

“Countless children, mothers, and fathers have counted on [pregnancy resource centers] as a support network and educational resource during their toughest times in life, and they should never fear government overreach that strips them of their mission and values,” Hawkins writes.

“House Republicans will continue to stand with pregnancy resource centers and the families they serve and ensure they can operate freely without government overreach.”